Gayle Wilson - Rafe Sinclair's Revenge

The fireman’s eyes met Rafe’s, holding on them briefly before he answered.

“Nothing we can’t get later,” he said. “The fire marshal will need to examine the scene after we get the blaze controlled and things cool down. That’ll take a couple of days. We can always get back to you if we have other questions then. You go on now and get that scan. Smartest thing you can do.”

“Come on,” Rafe said again.

It would have been easier to take her elbow and physically insist she get into the waiting ambulance, and it should have been okay by now to do that. He didn’t risk it. Not with the sounds and the smells associated with the fire still going on in the background.

He had successfully locked them out of his consciousness, but there was no guarantee that something wouldn’t happen that he wasn’t prepared for. Something that might trigger another flashback. That also was not a risk he was willing to take.

He debated asking the driver to wait until he could get his car so he could follow the ambulance. That way they could leave from the hospital without coming back here.

There were a couple of problems with that. He wasn’t willing to leave Elizabeth alone even for the time it would take for him to run back to the motel. And he doubted she’d be willing to leave town with only the clothes on her back. Especially if they were telling her that the explosion had been the result of a gas leak. Especially if she believed them.

He didn’t, not for one minute, but there wasn’t much point in arguing the theory with the chief. That was something the fire marshal could sort out when he arrived.

By the time he had, he and Elizabeth would be long gone.

“I told you,” she said.

She still looked like warmed-over death, but according to the emergency room attending, the CT had revealed nothing troublesome. They’d been given the general precautions, but thank God, precautions were all they were.

“You never could resist saying ‘I told you so,’” he said, taking her elbow.

He didn’t even have to think about the wisdom of doing that now. It was strange, but a hospital, despite the time he’d spent in a couple of them after the bombing, had never been a trigger for the flashbacks.

“I didn’t get the opportunity nearly as often as I’d have liked,” she said.

“So no chance to develop any willpower.”

“This isn’t the way—” she began, pulling against his direction.

He put his hand against the small of her back, applying pressure. “It’s the way we’re going.”

“But the front is that way.”

“Exactly,” he said, steering her in the opposite direction.

He knew the scan had been a necessity, but it had also increased the risk that the terrorist would have time to zero in on their location and to make other plans. Of course, if he were typical, he would have been watching them from the first. Especially staying around to watch the fireworks. They could never resist that. Not even the best of them.

“You really think someone set off that explosion?” she asked, finally giving in and allowing him to guide her.

“Let’s just say the timing seems coincidental.”

“Between Steiner’s warning and this?”

He nodded, not bothering to articulate the obvious.

“But you didn’t know he was here when you came.”

“How could I?”

He opened the door to a corridor marked Authorized Personnel Only, directing her down it as if he knew where he was going. He did have a fairly good idea, having studied the fire exit chart in the emergency room while they’d waited.

“I thought that’s why you were here.”

“I was here to deliver Griff’s message.”

“And it took you a week to decide to do that.”

He was trying to figure out which way to go since the corridor they’d been following had come to an abrupt dead end. What she had just said didn’t register for a moment.

“I told you. I knew Jorgensen was dead.”

Actually, it hadn’t taken him an entire week to finish the dueling pistol. The whole time he’d worked, the chilling words of that security alert haunted him, warring with his certainty that whoever had blown up the barracks in Greenland and the ambassador’s residence in Madrid, it hadn’t been Jorgensen. In the end, despite his surety, he had come to deliver the warning. He had known he’d never be able to forgive himself if there was anything to Griff’s concern. Apparently there had been.

“So you hung around here just watching me?”

“I didn’t get into town until yesterday,” he said, confused by her questions.

He’d driven all night and most of the day yesterday, but he liked to drive. He especially liked it at night, when there was little traffic and long stretches of darkness and silence.

She stopped, pulling against his hold. He turned his head and found that although her gaze was on his face, it seemed unfocused. She was obviously thinking about something other than his features.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Someone’s been following me. I could feel them. All week. When you showed up last night, I naturally assumed it had been you.”

“You saw somebody?”

She shook her head, her gaze still contemplative.

“Nothing. Not a sign of anyone. I put it down to paranoia because I never saw them. When you came to the house—” She broke off the explanation, her eyes lifting to his, seeing him this time. “I thought I hadn’t seen anyone because it was you.”

If someone had been following her all week, then he hadn’t led them to her, which was a consolation. He had taken every precaution he could think of, and as she had intimated, he was very good at what he did. Still, there had been a niggling guilt in the back of his mind that he might have been responsible for giving away her location.

“Is it possible this is Jorgensen?” she asked.

“No,” he said, urging her forward again.

He had told Griff the truth. He had watched the bastard die. He was willing to concede this might be a protégé or a colleague, someone Jorgensen had trained, but it couldn’t be the man himself. He was sure of that.

The fact that whoever it was had been watching Elizabeth all week was significant, however, because nothing had happened until he’d shown up. Whoever this was had been waiting for him to arrive.

The explosion had been for his benefit. Arranged so that when Rafe heard the noise and smelled the smoke, he would believe exactly what he had believed—that this time Elizabeth had been the victim.

“Then who set off that explosion?” she asked.

“Someone who wanted me to think you were inside that building. If this had been Jorgensen, believe me, he would have made sure.”

There was a small hesitation, and then she said, “I should have been.”

“What?” He had been only half listening, wondering if the bomber could possibly know why his ruse had been so successful.

“I should have been in the office this morning. He knew that because he’d been watching me all week. He knew what time I get there every day. And then…this morning I was late.”

A coldness settled in Rafe’s stomach as he began to understand the implications of what she was saying.

“It should have been deliberate,” she went on. “Being late, I mean. I thought yesterday that I’d fallen into a routine. They always told us that was dangerous.”

It was. If you had any reason to believe you might be a target for someone. After all these years Elizabeth shouldn’t have had reason to believe that. He hadn’t.

“He could have set his damn watch by me,” she said bitterly. “I turn the key in that lock every morning at precisely nine o’clock. Except this morning—”